Monday, March 16, 2009

The Difference a Duvet Makes

A friend of mine who appreciates design but admittedly had no ideas for her own space asked me for a hand in sprucing up their stark beach rental. Our first task was to update their bedding and add some color to the master bedroom. The couple had been using a very washed out duvet set of pale blue and white and with their white walls and light grey carpet it wasn't doing anything for this room. My friend really wanted to stick with white so I had to find a way to give her a white bed without it getting lost into the walls and carpet and they didn't want to spend a too much so a new headboard, lamps, side tables, etc was not an option.

So here's what we were dealing with. A very large window takes up the corner of the room and much of the two walls it is on and these vertical floor blinds are a necessity for the bright light their bedroom receives. She wants to eventaully cover them with curtains which I was glad to hear her say, we'll leave that for another day. They currently have a Standard king with a California frame and no headboard. The bed skirt is a necessary evil in this case, we had to keep it to hide their box-spring.

Viola! Target gave us everything we needed. She loved the white duvet cover but I was able to show her how the pewter stitching was just enough to make the difference the room was needing. We went with a Fieldcrest duvet cover that was $110, two Target Home Pebble Quilt Shams in dark grey for $20 each, and a Target Home Bedskirt in Molten Lead for $30. The accent pillows are also from Target including the Dwell Studio Peony Pillow (Love this pillow) which we got for $18 due to the tag being ripped off, the Home Geo Circle for $20, and the Home Geo Stripe pillow for $20. I was able to bring even more color in through the pillows as two of them have pewter and all three of them have yellow. I think it looks great and more importantly my friend loved it.

The Fieldcrest duvet had really good quality stitching, very similar to my own Nicole Miller duvet that was not as good of a buy. The material was also on the thicker side which is good because I didn't know their duvet was tan!

The molten lead bedskirt gives just enough contrast so the bed doesn't disappear into the carpet. It also anchors the interlocked stitching and the accent pillows. What an improvement!

So for under $250, we gave this room a cleaner and brighter look just by changing the bedding. My friend was thrilled and I can't wait to hear how her first nights sleep in it went.

Next on the agenda is dressing their windows and storage. I'll keep you posted on these room make overs.